The invention relates to a method for operating an infotainment system of a motor vehicle for searching a database. During entering of a search term into an input field an input unit automatically completes a partial input of the user to a suggested input. The invention also includes a motor vehicle with an infotainment system, which is operated according to the method.
An infotainment system of a motor vehicle, which can be operated in different operating modes, for example as navigation system, as telephony and as media playback can enable access to a large amount of data relating to each of these modes. In the navigation mode the user has to be provided access for example to a navigation database and has to be enabled to search the database. In the case of the telephony the user has to be able to search an address database. In the media playback the user has to be provided with access to titles of musical pieces and movies via a systematic search of a media database. For the search the user usually enters a letter or generally a character combination in an input field of an input device, which he extends stepwise or which he corrects by deleting erroneously entered characters. In the following this stepwise change of the partial input is referred to as editing or editing of a partial input.
In order to shorten the time of input of the search term and to thereby increase comfort during operation, it is known that when a user is searching for destinations, for example in a navigation system, to suggest a list of possible destinations to the user, that start with the already entered letter combination. The list can hereby contain already previously selected destinations.
The thus provided selection list does not fully realize all possibilities to guess the search result the user is looking for and to thereby enable the user to more quickly gain access to the searched for database entry.
From EP 1 455 163 A2 a method for entering destinations into a navigation system is known in which the destination objects are assigned to a class, in which similar destination objects are combined. From the destination database thus not only the destination objects are selected that are identical with the entered destination but also destination objects that are similar to the entered destination, so that typical writing errors such as letter inversions, typing errors, missing letters or a different spelling are compensated and the searched for destination objects can be displayed even though the destination was entered incorrectly.
From DE 102 19 499 A1 a method for selecting a name of a destination in a motor vehicle navigation system is known, in which characters are defined by entering the name of a destination character by character by the user and hereby selection suggestions for a name of a possible destination are displayed, wherein the selection suggestions contain a character sequence that has already been entered character by character as a starting component.
From DE 100 12 441 A1 a method for entering a destination in a navigation system is known in which characters of a destination name are entered and for which then a list of destination names is generated that start with the entered characters, wherein the list of destination names is generated depending on the distance of the destinations that are assigned to the name of the destination from the actual location.
From EP 2 050 610 A1 a motor vehicle is known in which a navigation system for entering a destination displays the most recently visited destinations on a right hand side of a screen, while the left hand side enables a character by character input of the name of the destination.
From the Fraunhofer institute a search program for mobile end devices is known which is marketed under the name “FlashFind”. During entering of a search term a list of possible navigation destinations is displayed to the user, that the system has already found in a navigation database during the partial input. In addition the partial input inputted by the user is completed in the input field by different colored further search terms, which are selected from the list underneath the input field. The goal of this input method is to enable the system to output the desired database entry to the user as fast as possible without knowing beforehand what the destination searched for by the user is.
The navigation systems known from the state of the art thus offer either an intermediate search result from the navigation database or a list of the most recently visited destinations, as it can be retrieved from a search history of the navigation system.
From EP 2 354 984 A1 it is known that the full text search can be configured less complex when instead of using an individual full text index multiple index tables are used which are linked via a higher-level table. From this publication it is further known that an individual database entry of a database can also contain category data beside the actual, distinct object names for navigation destinations, which data for example indicate that a certain navigation destination is a restaurant.